Country: Iraq

Group: Turkmen

Date: 19 October 2022

Team: Aria Robinson (lead), Noelle Colling, Gabby Staker, Juwairiah Afridi, Samuel Kniery 

Content Warnings: Lethal Violence, Ethnocide, War

Approximate Time Period: 1959 – Present

There is ample evidence that the Kurdish government, the Iraqi government, and ISIS have all committed lethal violent acts against Turkmen in Iraq.  For this reason, the data quality for this article is a 3. As an early exapmle, in1959 Kurdish people rioted and killed Turkmen in Kirkuk (Minority Rights Group, 2017). The Kurdistan Democratic Party killed several members of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, and the party released no information regarding the investigation into the deaths. The security forces tortured, raped, and beat people they detained and suspected of opposing the regime (Bureau, 2003). The Kurdish government continued to marginalize Turkmen, confirmed by U.N. reports from 2006 that claim instances of the Kurdish military illegally policing and torturing Turkmen (Minority Rights Group, 2017). The toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 specifically catalyzed violent behavior, with the majority of tension exploding in Kirkuk (Minority Rights Group, 2017). Many sources continue to report that ISIS continues to attack Turkmen (Bor, 2019). This is supported by the report of Turkmen leaders in 2016 that there are still over 600 Shi’a Turkmen women and children who have yet to be found and are believed to remain in ISIS’s captivity (Minority Rights Group, 2017).

Sources

  1. Bor, G. (2019). RESPONSE TO AND REPARATIONS FOR CONFLICT-RELATED SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN IRAQ THE CASE OF SHIʿA TURKMEN SURVIVORS IN TEL AFAR. In LSE Middle East Centre. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102145/1/Bor_response_to_and_reparations_for_conflict_published.pdf
  2. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State. (2003). Iraq: Country report on human rights practices – 2002. Human Rights Review. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12142-003-1018-5.pdf 
  3. Human Rights Watch. (2016, May 10). Turkey: Border Guards Kill and Injure Asylum Seekers. Human Rights Watch. https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/05/10/turkey-border-guards-kill-and-injure-asylum-seekers
  4. Minority Rights Group International. (2017). Iraq: Turkmen. Minority Rights. https://minorityrights.org/minorities/turkmen/